


You and I Are Monsters

by néohs (bangin_patchouli)



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: (He tries), Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Emotional, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Heavy Angst, I Apologize For This, M/M, Mild Blood, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Acceptance, Self-Hatred, Tags Are Hard, Tags May Change, They're both vampires, Vampires, What Have I Done, illumi is so damaged y'all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21155255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangin_patchouli/pseuds/n%C3%A9ohs
Summary: “Why don't they want me?” Illumi whispers into Hisoka’s mouth, and Hisoka laps up his words and swallows them.“Why don't they want you?” Hisoka repeats, prefacing his words with a stroke to Illumi’s cheek. “Why don't they want you? My dear, they don't want you if you aren’t the pretty little machine they made of your parts.”





	You and I Are Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> hi guys! so this fic has been my only focus for abouttt two months, and it's been very fun in addition to being a pretty sizable leap in my.. hm, formatting I suppose? there's a lot of pov changes, different kinds of dialogue (both inner and outer), a flashback of sorts, just things I've never really done before! 
> 
> there are pretty direct allusions to child abuse, just abuse in general regarding illumi, in addition to just.. the struggle I perceive him having with that, within himself, so be careful there! because it is a vampire au, there is also a lot of mention of blood, though it's not too intense as far as I can tell.
> 
> super big thank you to my absolutely wonderful friend, tay! she helped me with this an INCREDIBLE amount, from beginning to end, and don’t really know how good it would have been without her. another massive thank you to sun as well for reading over this and giving me tips and pointers throughout the story! and as usual thank you to my girlfriend for hearing me out first and interpreting my extremely convoluted thoughts without missing a beat. I love you all!
> 
> with all that being said, I really do hope you all enjoy this fic, and thank you so so so much for giving it a chance! it means the world!
> 
> (title(s) derived from "alright" by keaton henson)

Rain pierces through the black midnight air in shards of ice cold glass; they barely miss Illumi where he stands below the cover of the balcony of his apartment, though with sharp fingers, they grab for him. His throat burns, biting and bitter like the sting of alcohol over an open wound, and his skin tingles, cool to the touch without blood flowing through the veins beneath to keep it warm. His veins, still and empty for the rest of time. It doesn't quite hurt anymore, hasn't for a long time, but really there isn't anything there at all. Hollow. Not as if he needed it anyway, he still tells himself each time he feels the phantom prickle of a pulse. Although, _ blood_, isn't that what he cares for most of all?

Everything is the same, Illumi will say, and in the same breath, he will lie. It seems as if not a thing has changed as Illumi holds all the pieces of his life together with the force of his bloody, trembling hands, but simply put, it is not true. It is with the will of fire that sits, blue, in place of his heart, that he pushes it all beneath the surface, just to hear his father warn him that, _ Illumi, you must do better in moving forward, else your use to this family will surely dissipate. _

Illumi had gotten three drops of blood onto the hardwood floors. He had not been made aware that he must not do that. He had scrubbed the floor until his eyes burned.

_ Yes father. _

In the dark every night that he sits, waiting for sleep to claim him, knowing that it won't, he wishes with a blatant confusion to go home, and that his mother was able to look at his face without imagining that behind his lips is a sharp fair of elongated canines that now have seen as much blood as the tips of his needles, as the palms of his hands. Without cracking the fine bones of her fingers across his cheek and turning away.

_ How can we love you if you aren’t even human? _

His throat closes with a wet kind of fire.

_ How could we _ love _ you? _

He thinks about Kalluto’s eyes and how his purple irises flashes with alarm each time the black inside it snags on Illumi, if he even looks at all.

He has never felt human, hasn't thought too much about how that _ might _ feel; he wonders faintly if any trace of humanity had been wiped away long before he could even yearn for just a glimpse of it in a blurry memory. It isn't the _ dehumanization _ that weighs almost more than he can carry, how could it if he had never been _ humanized _ in the first place?

Though, every now and then, he craved numbly for just that, a glimpse, a memory, a ghost of something he can't remember, never had.

Instead, it is a question that drags him down. If he is not wanted by the very few who made him, if they have no use for him beyond this point, if they don't _ love _ him anymore, do any of his actions matter?

_ Do I matter? _

He thinks _ not_, as he dials Hisoka’s phone number. He presses the call button so hard that the glass shatters beneath his finger. 

The pattering vibrations of the cellphone tingle faintly into Hisoka’s skin, and he feels half a smile tickle his lips; only one person would be calling that phone, and he had been waiting for so long. It’s about damn time.

The trembling jerks from the girl leaned against his chest brings Hisoka back to the present. He holds her rather gently in one arm, his other hand poised against her chin, tilting it up, and her legs, supple and smooth, are lain over the top of his lap. She’s got long dark hair falling over her shoulders like it’s too thick for her; that's what caught his attention in the first place.

Her skin is pallid now with the lack of blood running through the veins underneath it, and the red of what was spilled dribbles down her neck and nearly bare chest. She’s very pretty, and he really had asked if this was what she wanted, though now he's rather sure that she had no idea what she was getting herself into unil long after he had taken his fanged position at the base of her neck. A shame she couldn't hold up longer than she did, Hisoka thinks to himself as he rises and lets her slip into the chair beneath her.

Hisoka catches the call on the final ring and says unhurriedly, “I see you’re deciding to make use of the contact I slipped into your phone at last, dear Illumi?”

Silence crackles on the other end for a long time. Hisoka doesn't push, just lets his eyes wander the hotel room as he leans against the hard marble of the bar. It’s dark, swathed in deep red curtains and melting into the flickering lights of the candles the girl had asked to light. He had let her, had liked watching as she bent with a match between her fingers, though he doesn't distinctly remember watching her face. Just the curtain of black and her paper-pale skin. Hisoka stares until he hears his own name spoken stiffly over the line, through a mouth that Hisoka imagines does not want to be open.

“Hisoka.”

He can just see Illumi now, wants to. Wide black eyes with nothing in them that look back at him as if he's not heard a word Hisoka said, but he always hears what Hisoka says. He wants to see Illumi now, but something in the set of his jaw, too tight, doesn't feel quite right.

“Yes, it’s me,” he says. It feels different than any other time, like even if he could find the right words, they wouldn’t work if he said them. “Of course it’s me.”

“Am I correct to presume that you have the address to my current residence?” Illumi asks, his voice still so rigid, like he's holding on tight. To _ what _, Hisoka can only imagine. 

“Naturally,” Hisoka replies, a forced lax in his voice to which he cannot relate. He swivels to lay his line of sight over the girl in the stained chair, one hand loose and blood-covered between her thighs. He reckons she won't be waking up any time soon.

“Are you able to be here within the hour?”

Hisoka blinks at first; that's not something he ever thought he would hear. He's dreamt of it, of course, even alluded to the possibility, only to be told, each time, to be quiet. But there’s just something about the _ way _ Illumi asks, as if he feels like he isn't allowed to ask anything of anybody.

“Is something the matter, darling?”

“I don't know,” Hisoka hears, and he breathes out slowly, waiting for the rest. “I think there might be something wrong.”

_ With me, _ remains unspoken.

Hisoka doesn't speak as he approaches the girl and stops before her. She really is lovely, enticing if he may say, and her eyes are moving behind her eyelids.. With her eyes still closed, she mutters almost inaudibly,

“You need t’go?”

Hisoka nods, even though he knows she can't see him.

“I’ll be there shortly, dear,” he says, and the line clicks off.

The girl is light in his arms, and cold, as he brings her to the immaculately made hotel bed. She looks small in the middle of it, under the covers, black hair splayed about behind her. Hisoka pulls a coat on and steps out into the pelting rain, flipping the lock on the door behind him.

The taxi ride is a purposeful blur of a grey moonlit sky, smeared with rain through the window, and racing thoughts of Illumi, and what waits behind the cracking dam of his steel voice and wooden words. He knows what it is, and he knows he's going to see it, writhing, behind the black shield of Illumi’s eyes.

Hisoka knocks twice on the door, and his skin prickles with muted alarm when it creaks open beneath his upturned fist. Regardless, he steps in, locking the door behind him, and he's immediately hit with a stone cold sensation of what he faintly recalls to be _ loneliness _. The bed in the center of the open floor plan is made, as if it’s not been slept in, and the air is still, as if everybody inside has been holding their breath. They have.

There he is. Hisoka thinks storms were made for Illumi; the way lightning seems to crackle in sparks atop his skin each time it strikes, the way thunder seems to make his hair rise from his shoulders, the whole black, white, greyness of the sky is reflected onto Illumi like he's a mirror. He looks beautiful underneath it, sharp but quiet, biting but _ broken _ all at once.

Something feels so out of place, in the base of his throat and the air that barely makes its way into his lungs. Hisoka steps silently out toward the balcony, toward Illumi from whom he feels the chaos coming in waves, even though the surface of him is as still as stone.

The rain hits Hisoka softly, and then he's standing behind Illumi, poised for anything Illumi might do, wonders if Illumi can feel him so close or if his own presence is as overwhelming to himself as it is to Hisoka. So he takes another step out, lets the moon wash over him as best it can through the screen of angry thunderclouds, and says,

“Illumi, dear, what’s the matter?” His voice is gentler than he can recall it ever being, yet Illumi turns.

Even if Hisoka couldn't read, like when he was a child, the words written into Illumi’s skin with dark ink would be clear as anything simple, except they _ aren’t _ simple at all. Illumi is a book, the edges of the paper torn and burned. The words are written in a jagged prose, words Hisoka _ still _ can't read, wonders if the time will ever come when he _ can _ . The words aren’t _ real, _but there on Illumi, they are written.

“Illumi,” he says cautiously, like he's coaxing a cat to come to him, and he's talking too much already. He raises a slow hand up and out, just so slightly, and in time with the movement, Illumi takes a step.

And another, and another, and with every step, Hisoka finds he can read one more word etched onto Illumi’s unsaturated skin. Lightning flashes with a booming bout of thunder to match, and the word _ misery _ scrawls itself across Illumi’s face like a crack in the breaking glass of an antique vase‒ don't touch that, it’ll break, and even if you glue it back together again, it’ll never be the same. Hisoka doesn't hear the step but watches it instead, and a hard kind of forced resignation paints itself a pretty pink on Illumi’s cheek in the shape of a slim, ring-clad slap imprint. His shoulders are raised and tense with a harsh line of horror, and his big, wide eyes scream _ help me _ at the volume of a whisper, like his mouth is incapable of doing so itself. 

“I need for you to tell me,” Illumi says, _ finally _, words that make sense, words that don't make Hisoka feel like he shouldn’t be listening. Illumi stops abruptly then, arms hanging like broken pipes from the ceiling at his sides. Hisoka wonders if the aura-like vibrations he's seeing are emanating from the drops of water as they pound ruthlessly onto Illumi’s bare skin, and he reaches out and twists a wet strand of Illumi’s hair around his finger.

Illumi doesn't know what he's _ saying _ . Hisoka is right there, so _ close_, what he _ wanted_, but why is that what he wanted? Doesn't he know? He can't have that. His skin feels like ice, quivering beneath the neverending sheets of rain, and his thoughts – are they, his? – trample so hard through his brain that it hurts. Illumi has spent his entire life reading others to know exactly when to, how to attack, and the alarmed look ringing all over Hisoka’s frozen features is telling him to _ run_.

_ Don't deal with this, you don't need to make sense to yourself in order to be functional, you don't need to have a clear mind to do what I tell you to do. Don't look at your mother, she doesn't like to see you anymore, not like that. Look at me. _

Illumi doesn't like to hear his father’s voice when he isn't there.

But, eyes wide – he can't close them – he leans into the side of Hisoka’s hand where it brushes faintly against the front of his shoulder, long, wet strands of his hair twisting cylindrically around his lithe, pretty fingers. The sharp tip of a pointed purple nail scratches softly against the hollow of his throat, and Hisoka’s eyes are big and golden, the flecks of the strings in his irises turning pale with each muted strike of lightning. Hisoka doesn't speak with his eyes, doesn't have to, and Illumi feels his whole body shudder, feels lightheaded, when Hisoka murmurs, voice like melted honey down Illumi’s throat,

“Tell you what, my dear?”

When Hisoka says it, he sees a quiet spark light then fizzle in the pupil of Illumi’s eyes. It speaks before it dies, Hisoka hears it whisper, _ I’m allowed to say it? _ Illumi steps in, close, Hisoka lets him press their chests together and drops his hand from Illumi’s drenched hair to ghost the small of his back. His stomach leaps when Illumi grips tight onto the fabric on either side of his arms, elbows caught between their bodies, and his eyes are just so _ big_, pretty and terrible and blank like a piece of paper whose words have been poorly erased.

Illumi’s face is but an inch away now, those beautiful black eyes blurring, but Hisoka doesn't move away. He touches his own hands together on Illumi’s back and runs them up and down, so slowly, over hard muscle, and wonders if he's ever seen someone so dreadful so _ sad_.

“Please tell me,” Illumi says, and it’s so _ hard_. It burns in the back of his throat, his tongue is in knots that he didn't tie, his chest feels made of metal, and the metal is cracking in the cold of ice he's never felt before, and Hisoka is holding him. He's aware of large hands, steady, and he wonders why his eyes are beginning to sting like something is stuck inside.

Hisoka waits for him. He knows there is a breaking point, he can see it in the wobbly tears pooling quickly in the rims of Illumi’s eyes, and he wonders if Illumi has cried recently enough to remember it. He doubts so. He watches the words begin to spill from Illumi’s pretty, plump lips, white now, and he feels his chest jump. It _ hurts_, like a twinge, the twist of a knife, and it feels good; Illumi’s voice is brittle and thick, full of air he can't seem to keep a hold of when he says,

“Tell me I’m allowed to be here.” _ Tell me that I’m allowed to want to matter, to be worth more than my use. _

He says it like he expects a scoff to reply, and then a backhand to the jaw. Hisoka would go so far as to believe, wholeheartedly, that he's right to think such, and he sighs and feels the tension leave him in a purposeless exhale as he leans to plant his face to Illumi’s slick neck.

“Oh, dear,” he murmurs, and then he wonders if he can make Illumi shiver. “Oh, _ dear._”

Illumi feels the pretense of consequence travel up his spine, over his shoulders, like the legs of a spider made of ice, when Hisoka says it again. _ Oh, dear. _ He's really done it now, hasn't he? He squeezes his eyes shut and waits for it, can't help but press hard enough to hurt onto Hisoka’s shoulders, but all he feels is a soft press of lips to his neck. It’s so soft that he almost doesn't feel it, but then he _ does _ feel it, again, then again. He shuts his eyes and doubts that it’s real.

“Would you like me to show you just how much you matter, my love?” Hisoka asks, the words like sweet smoke from his lips as he levels with Illumi’s eyes.

“Show me,” Illumi breathes like he meant to make it a question, but he's forgotten how to ask one.

“Show you?” Hisoka purrs low in his throat, widening his eyes and tilting his head down. “Show you like this?”

Hisoka pulls Illumi back with him as he goes, hands gentle, through the open balcony door, and watches a purple strike of lightning pierce the dark horizon in the distance. He hears no thunder this time.

Their clothes drip steadily onto the swirled marble floor, but Hisoka lets the slow hands of time move him, slips cold fingers under the hem of Illumi’s shirt where it’s plastered to his skin. He's answering, so slowly, letting words seep from the tips of his fingers.

Illumi lets him. He doesn't quite know what Hisoka plans to do, plans to _ show him_, but his fingers feel good, soft against his skin. Nothing feels good anymore, soft anymore, if it ever had, so he lets the air leave his lungs in a sigh when Hisoka pulls his shirt over his head. He takes care with gentle hands to not tug on Illumi’s hair, and Illumi loosens against him, because nobody’s ever done that. Nobody is _ careful _ with him.

He doesn't quite register the wet slap of his discarded shirt against the marble; it hits as more of an afterthought, and upon realizing so, Illumi sucks in a harsh breath and lets it freeze his body against Hisoka’s chest.

He hadn't heard it, he should have been listening, _ Illumi you _ stupid _child, something could have happened. _ His mouth feels stuffed with cotton, his lungs filled with solidifying water, and he holds tighter onto the shoulders beneath his hands, though he thinks they might be his own now. _ Illumi, so stupid. _

His mind fogs up so quickly, so dense that it sneaks out from behind the screen of his face, and he can hardly focus on the pair of blurry golden eyes right in front of his own. They look sad, but Hisoka can't be sad, can he? That's impossible, just like it’s impossible for Illumi to be worth anything more than a killing doll, a puppet with strings made of chains attached to his elbows and knees. He is impenetrable, unlovable, confused, so confused, and that makes him worth what? Nothing. Nothing, he knows that, doesn't he? So stupid Illumi. He lets himself close up and away, into that safe place that looks so much like a hole, dug so deep down. But that's where he belongs, that's what Father says.

Hisoka watches it happen, like it’s on a screen and he just can't slip his fingers through the plasma. He holds Illumi up, holds him in. His eyes are open, bottomless pits with no focus, staring into nothing, absolutely nothing; his face holds the same expression as when he's looking into the mirror, combing through that beautiful hair of his. Hisoka does that now, trailing his fingertips through the strands and letting them trace ever so slightly down Illumi’s bare back. The motion doesn't elicit so much as a twitch.

“Illumi, darling,” Hisoka says, quietly, and tugs down a bit, baring Illumi’s neck when he's met with silence. “Love, can you hear me?”

The column of Illumi’s neck looks so _ inviting_, but the image of his arms crossed in an _ x_, hooked by nails into his own shoulders, is enough of a deterrent.

“Oh dear,” he mutters to himself. _ What a dilemma this is. Just what has been drilled into Illumi’s poor little head? _

Hisoka pulls him gently, glad when his body seems to know to follow, until he bumps into the chair he'd passed on his way out to the balcony. It’s big with high, closed-in arms, and a concaved back, and Hisoka thinks it’s oddly reminiscent of his own back at the hotel, now covered in bloodstains. He absently wishes this one matched, red on red.

He sits down into it, controlled, and then not so controlled is the ghost of his pulse when he brings Illumi down to meet him. Illumi sits down along the length of Hisoka’s right thigh, and Hisoka draws a supporting hand to the slender curve of Illumi’s hip. Illumi leans loosely into Hisoka, and the latter revels when he slips a cunning, steady hand up over Illumi’s waist, so smooth, still wet, cold, and he guides the other’s chin to rest on his shoulder. He slides his hand from Illumi’s waist to the top of his thigh. He hasn't touched Illumi in so, so long. He squeezes hard and hums,

“Illumi, come back to me, my love. Wouldn’t you like to see what you’re worth?”

He lets his tongue tease his own lips, then drags it, slowly enough to torment, in a stripe over the hollow of Illumi’s neck,

“What you’re worth to me?”

It’s enough to call forth a response, finally, though his words or his tongue, Hisoka does not know, but chills grace his skin when Illumi’s voice makes a quiet attempt to break free from his throat. Frantically, Illumi turns to clamp cold hands down over Hisoka’s shoulders again, hair a curtain in the way of his face, like a _ child_, but he's not a child, not with his knees wide open now on either side of Hisoka’s hips, draped so close that Hisoka can feel the air he's manually forcing in and out of his lungs. Hisoka breathes in too, lets it burn, and smooths his hands up and down Illumi’s waist. He feels Illumi shudder, and murmurs,

“There you go, darling,” then against Illumi’s bare chest, so softly, “there you go.”

Illumi makes a sound, allusive to a word, but Hisoka feels the vibrations in his lips on Illumi’s chest more than hears it. His eyes are closed, and he wonders over again what exactly trapped in Illumi’s head.

He pets Illumi slowly, over his hair, his sides, his thighs, wants him to come back on his own time, and lets himself wander away into his own mind, partially; away he may be, but he doesn't lose touch of the feeling of Illumi beneath his dancing hands.

Hisoka thinks delicately of the time, several years before, when Illumi had called him in the dead of night.

Hisoka was awake, washing blood from his mouth and replacing it with red wine, and his phone rang; the screen read _ illu♥ _.

“Hisoka,” Illumi said in a way of greeting. Hisoka placed his glass on the island marble top, and remembered that Illumi had just been turned not but a week prior. Hisoka had been there, taken Illumi home, and had not heard from him since.

“Illumi, dear, what brings you to grace me with the sound of your voice at this hour?” He had not the heart nor the nerve to ask if Illumi was alright. “Could it be that you need my help?”

“Yes.”

The answer had come and gone, clipped in sound and a shock to Hisoka’s ears. If it were any other time, any other _ person_, he might have deemed it a joke, but the kind that isn't really funny. Shock value is something Hisoka is rather good at, and this was shocking if nothing else.

“Are you serious?” he asked anyway. He could hear Illumi’s frown when he answered.

“Unfortunately,” came the reply, and his voice seemed so gated, as if he were holding something back, a secret he might be hated for, get in trouble for. He said, “Are you currently in company?”

“Ah, what a wonderful time you caught me, dear. I am alone,” Hisoka answered him, and _ damn _ that phantom thumping heart below his breastbone. The silence that lingered on the other end only sped Hisoka’s thoughts into enough of a flutter that he said, “Illumi?”

The line clicked, and Hisoka stared at the wall, a stone grey; in his memory, a crack was beginning to split down the middle of it. As if stone could break like that.

Hisoka thought then that maybe it could, when Illumi appeared at his door but an hour later, black hair a mess around his face, a single backpack slung over his shoulder, and a hallowed shade of purple below his eyes. Hisoka couldn't say that he didn't at least half expect this, half long for it.

“Illumi, what are you doing… here?” he asked, and reached out to take the strap of Illumi’s backpack. It felt a bit like an alternate reality when Illumi let it slip from his shoulder into Hisoka’s hand. Hisoka didn't count on a straight answer, and he did not get one.

“You told me over the phone that you were alone.” Illumi’s voice was the same as it had been through the crackling phone speaker before, but in person it sounded so much more restrained, like it had been broken into pieces then poorly glued back together again. Knowing the Zoldyck’s, it most likely had been. But the purple on Illumi’s face and the lack of dexterity in his movement – for an assassin of his like – told a tale with which Hisoka was familiar; he'd always hated the burning, trembling sensation of starvation, writhing like a sunburned snake in the pit of an empty stomach. That’s what he could see through Illumi’s eyes like they were holes into the ground.

“So I did,” he said.

He brought Illumi inside and gave him a container of deep, cold red he'd put away for emergencies, and watched Illumi lean against the counter in relief as the bright color bled into the corners of his mouth. Instantaneously, porcelain replaced the purple in his cheeks, and he blinked slowly, like a kitten who’d drunk too much milk – Hisoka quite liked looking at the oxymoron of Illumi Zoldyck.

“My parents have told me that,” Illumi said then paused, and Hisoka let him think, could almost see the thoughts whirring. _ What to say, how to say it? _ “They have told me that I am to “fix my mistake” before I am able to return to the manor.”

Illumi looked like it had hurt him to say, like he hadn't said it aloud yet. Even so translucent as he was then, all cracked and chaotically misplaced, compared to his ever present opaque mystery and threatening aura, Hisoka thought Illumi was beautiful. A pretty, pretty thing with a repressed free will, topped now with rejection heavy enough to shatter steel. Hisoka did well then to capture the pain of looking at Illumi, _ this _ Illumi, the one with blood on his mouth, standing in Hisoka’s kitchen, holding himself together with blind dutifulness alone, and he kept the image in the center of his heart, as if the word _ important _ was written across its front.

“‘Fix your mistake’,” Hisoka said, slowly, tempting the murky waters of conversation with Illumi. Illumi nodded, and Hisoka looked partially at his hands clamped tightly around the empty plastic, and partially at his jaw clamped even tighter. He was so frozen.

“Yes, they’ve told me I must kill the one who,” Illumi said, and looked to the ceiling, thinking again. Hisoka let him, again. “Who managed to turn me into something as terrible as this. They… reject me until further notice.”

Hisoka blinked, and wondered if he'd ever been truly distraught over another person’s situation before. He thought that there’s always a first for some things, and stepped toward Illumi to take the container.

“Illumi,” he called, but quietly, close. He reached up, oddly but necessarily hesitant, and with his thumb he wiped the smeared blood from the corners of Illumi’s mouth; when he swiped the liquid from his own skin, it tasted like Illumi instead of iron, though the differentiating qualities weren’t of quantity. Illumi looked then, with his big black eyes, so anomalously cloudy, so cloudy that Hisoka couldn't even see his own reflection inside them. Oh how he abhorred to see such prettiness in such peril.

“You killed him, the night of the incident,” Illumi said, standing so rigid still, but he didn't protest when Hisoka brought a hand to lie on his shoulder, fingertips still faintly stained with blood down to the print.

“I did, indeed, dear,” Hisoka agreed, and _ god_, was that look torment. He wished Illumi would be upset with him, but the clouds in his eyes struck no lightning, sounded no thunder; they only cried rain that would forever remain inside.

Hisoka remembered it, killing the beast of a vampire who, in some inconceivable way, had managed to gain the upper hand on Illumi. He remembered not, or rather could not place a describable emotion to, the feeling of flames that had erupted beneath the frigid lining of his skin upon seeing the enemy’s teeth sunk viciously deep into the roughly bared side of Illumi’s neck. He had hung from the tree above, upside down, and Hisoka had launched a card through the air so quickly that even he could not see it; although, he doubted he would have been able to see it through the crimson veil over his eyes anyway. He had watched the hard, thin sheet sever the lamia’s head, and he had watched the outburst of blood from the laceration splatter against Illumi’s face and his neck, also bleeding; it had soaked deeply through his clothes already. He had watched Illumi take two steps towards him, and then watched the world blur into dark lineages around him as he flashed to catch Illumi where his knees buckled as the contamination began to take course. How unlikely this outcome had been.

And then he had driven Illumi home, no novelty. 

“You killed him, so I… cannot,” Illumi said, and if that was what guilt felt like, Hisoka wanted it gone. It felt like melting flesh and poison in the back of his throat, and Hisoka touched Illumi’s cheek because at least he _ could_.

Illumi stayed on Hisoka’s couch for a week, up before dawn, out until midnight, and each time he returned he was covered in blood. He refused to let Hisoka provide anything for him but his couch, and once, Hisoka had watched him brush the stained tangles from his hair in the bathroom. He had watched, and wanted to damn everything to hell so he could meet it with flames when he himself came to be there, one day.

But Illumi stayed only for a week, a stiff show of thanks falling from his lips as Hisoka fiddled with the black ends of his hair in the open doorway, and of course Hisoka kept tabs. Illumi never called back, and he never went home. Hisoka was certain that he never felt _ loved _ anyway.

Hisoka puts the thoughts away, folds them neatly, pats them softly, and closes the drawer when he hears a faint,

“Hisoka, why?”

Hisoka focuses his eyes onto Illumi’s face peering down on him, framed in black, slides hands up Illumi’s sides and back down again, and notices that Illumi’s expression is now intense tenfold, his windows for eyes boiling in black and wide as an inverted moon.

“Why, what, darling heart?” Hisoka asks in return, and thinks about reaching up to tuck a bit of hair behind Illumi’s ear. Instead he lets that framing edge of hair crown around his own face and slots his lips softly over Illumi’s. Illumi goes from locked to languid when Hisoka pulls on his bottom lip, then lets it go.

“Why don't they want me?” Illumi whispers into Hisoka’s mouth, and Hisoka laps up his words and swallows them. He leans back and runs fingers through Illumi’s rain slickened hair, and Illumi follows both of his movements like a weak magnet unsure of which pull is stronger, Hisoka or his hands. Hisoka looks carefully over Illumi’s face, to his wide eyes and his lips shiny with spit. Illumi looks to him, too, and asks the same question again, one thousand times at once with the most _ tragic _ look, and Hisoka feels like he's dissolving into the heat that's pooling in his chest.

“Why don't they want you?” Hisoka repeats, prefacing his words with a stroke to Illumi’s cheek. “Why don't they want you? My dear, they don't want you if you aren’t the pretty little machine they made of your parts.”

Illumi just looks at him, like he's speaking a different language, but the emotion carries all the same. Only, Hisoka reckons that Illumi won't quite be able to comprehend the crawling, dark feeling of waiting for an answer that you already know. Hisoka kisses the corner of Illumi’s closed frown in hopes of willing it away, and gives in, touching the thick, sleek strand of hair behind Illumi’s ear.

“They don't have mind enough to _ appreciate _ you as you _ are _,” he murmurs against Illumi’s neck, and feels Illumi swallow under the flat of his tongue. He feels Illumi shudder, then his hair brushes over Hisoka’s face as he looks away to his left. Hisoka backs up and draws a hand along Illumi’s side, over his chest and up, until he can drag a long-nailed finger down the angular length of Illumi’s sharp jaw. With two fingers and a thumb, he grips the point of Illumi’s chin and moves him back to face, so he can see every drop of boiling sadness, every burning flame of misunderstood anger, and every endless pit of hollow rejection that swirls in the beautiful black chaos of Illumi’s eyes.

“Look at me, dear,” Hisoka seeks, and Illumi does from beneath long straight lashes. An inch from Illumi’s slightly parted mouth, he says, “They don't.”

He levels up, threading fingers back into Illumi’s hair, and presses the gentlest motion, an impossible kiss, to the tip of Illumi’s nose, so cold. Illumi is so _ cold_, and Hisoka wants to make him _ warm. _

“But I do.”

Illumi flinches the moment those words encase him, lingering and prickling atop the numbness of his freezing skin. He squeezes his inner thighs around Hisoka’s hips just tight enough to keep himself upright, too tight, his throat’s _ too tight, _ and he digs his nails into the fabric on Hisoka’s shoulders, then into the skin beneath it. He feels it puncture in a vibration to his knuckles, and it sounds like a snap in front of his face, a quick, harsh, _ snap out of this nonsense. _

Hisoka is still gazing up at him with such _ patience_, a look that suffocates Illumi with its weight, so he turns away. If he can't see it, it isn't real, right? The snap still resonates so loudly in his ears that it sounds like words, sounds like _ that's not true, you can't do that. _

“That's not true, you can't do that,” Illumi says, lets it fall from his mouth like somebody else put it there. He's hit then with a cluster of memories of his school teacher shoving words into his mouth, so that he would repeat them until they no longer held any meaning. Hisoka tilts his head in… frustration? Concern? The emotion darkens his eyes, but Illumi can't tell what it _is_. That's the scary part. “Nobody can do that.”

“And what could you possibly mean by that, my dove?” Hisoka asks, and where Illumi thinks there should be malice in his voice, there is not. It’s _ still _ only patience, and that scares Illumi even more. The desire to lean into Hisoka's hand where it cups his cheek clashes wildly with that to flee into the bathroom and lock the door, get _ away_, because he _ cannot _ have this, of course.

“_Hisoka _,” Illumi chokes out, feels his throat constrict like it’s lined with barbed wire, and with his hands hard against Hisoka's chest, he pushes away, sliding roughly on top of Hisoka's thighs until he can stand. The cold marble beneath his feet is hard, grounding, and with it comes the deep, familiar feeling that he's made an incredible mistake. It stalks over him like flies on a corpse, tugs his shoulders to his ears in waiting tension; but his father is not here to knock the punishment into him with hard knuckles, and his mother is not here to scream so viciously that he cannot hear anything else, anything at all.

It is only Hisoka, observing him with _ emotion _ that isn't disgust from the chair, and every brambled inch of himself as he backs away from the only person in the world who says he cares about Illumi, and shows it. But Illumi knows he doesn't care, because he can't.

“Illumi,” Hisoka returns, and if only he would stop saying Illumi's _ name _ like that, like it’s _ pretty_, he would be able to leave. “Wait just a moment.”

Hisoka stands from the chair, and though he looks big and beautiful and nothing like _ punishment_, Illumi feels his hair being pulled every which way in a sharp, painful warning against him. He backs up farther, nearing the open balcony door. The cool mist of the water ricocheting from the metal threshold onto his ankles sends chills up his spine. Out there, the rain can wash everything away again.

“You do not want me,” Illumi grinds from his mouth like the words are made of metal, and grips hard against the doorframe.

“You only find me… physically pleasurable.” Hisoka doesn't move or look away, and Illumi wants to think that for once, he isn't really listening.

“You only want what I have to give.” He knows Hisoka really is listening, though, because his eyes are just so _ intense_.

“You only want to use me for _ something _ like they do.” With each word that leaves him, so does a boiling mixture of anger and exhaustion and want and scorn.

“I am not good for anything else.”

Illumi simmers in the silence, eyes fixed to the floor between Hisoka and himself. It burns and it’s freezing all at once, and the absence of words is so deafening that Illumi's head begins to swim. All the feelings he had been shoving down with his sore, bare hands come bubbling up fast in his throat, and in a frantic moment of weakness, Illumi flickers his stare straight forward to Hisoka.

There, in Hisoka’s amber eyes, is a fire burning so bright that Illumi can practically feel its heat, and in a flash Illumi _ somehow _ doesn't catch but should have, Hisoka is right before him, fast as the lightning outside, his hands crushing both of Illumi's shoulders.

It hurts, but Illumi doesn't think of it that way. He lets the broad sensation of it keep him tethered to the ground, and looks up to meet Hisoka's ardent expression. His twin flames are still burning, so _ hot_, and his knee is thrusted between Illumi's thighs when he says, so fiercely, 

“I’ll hear not a moment more of such nonsense,” and Illumi decides that he couldn't possibly be imagining the shake of anger emanating from Hisoka's bottom lip.

_ Yes, be angry with me. _ Illumi wants anger because he _ knows _ anger, better than _ love_. Lips parted so slightly, eyes half-focused on Hisoka's as they kindle, he innately twists stiff fingers into the wet hem of Hisoka's shirt.

Feeling the tug, Hisoka softens, and the expression as it melts makes Illumi bristle. His mind splits – what do I _ want? _ – when, brows pinched in tenderness and _ pity_, Hisoka brushes a careful thumb over Illumi's cheek.

“God, you sullied little lamb,” Hisoka murmurs, and he's coming _ closer_, close into Illumi's space; Illumi wonders hysterically why he doesn't mind. “Listen to me carefully, my dear. I want you to think about this.”

Illumi's adrenaline drops like a stone into the ocean when Hisoka's hands slip, heavy and solid, to his sides. His head begins to fill up with helium again, and he tries to take in all the air he can, feels like he's gasping when he's really not breathing at all. He tries to stay focused on Hisoka's steady gaze, but Hisoka's getting closer, so close until all he can see is the black behind his eyelids and all he can feel is Hisoka's arms wrapped like metal, like _ safety_, around his waist.

“Think,” Illumi breathes out into Hisoka's neck like a question, and brings his hands up aloofly to grasp the back of Hisoka's arms. The way their chests are pressed together so intimately, he can almost imagine their dead heartbeats mingling into a song.

“Yes, my darling, think. What have I ever really taken from you?” Hisoka asks low in Illumi's ear, and strokes Illumi's hair down his back. “Not another soul exists in this world who loves you for you as much as I do.”

The words land in Illumi's mind like an arrow in the bullseye of a target. There is nothing else there, nothing but space, until the still water begins to ripple. It stings a bit where the arrow pierced him, right in the center of the target, his _ heart_, and suddenly _ nothing _ becomes _ everything _.

For_ ever_, Hisoka has cherished him, painted him pretty with kisses and beautiful words, tender names. He's held him close, rough _ and _ soft, however he'd wanted; Hisoka always asks what he wants. Hisoka has brushed sharp killer’s fingers through his hair and told him, _ you are so precious to me_. Hisoka has drunk in every senseless word Illumi has ever said like it’s wine. Hisoka came to him in the middle of the night just because Illumi had _ asked him to_. And all these things, these _ impossible things_, share a commonality in the fact that Hisoka chose to do them _ all_.

As Illumi falls vertiginously, there is nothing but that in his mind, and that's the only _ nothing _ that Illumi wants. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading, and I Apologize if it hurt your feelings.... if you enjoyed, please feel free to leave a kudos or even a comment telling me what you liked, and also what you didn’t! feedback is the best thing a writer can receive! again, thank you so much...
> 
> and please stay tuned for the second, exponentially more Saucy installment to this. I promise it will get sexy, just hold out a bit. 
> 
> thank you!


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